Probing Zeeman coherence in nearly degenerate two-level atomic vapour with four-wave mixing

We present results of a study of four-wave mixing in Rb vapour with highly nonlinear susceptibility, using both homodyne and heterodyne detection. We demonstrate that the spectra have different appearances for media possessing electromagnetically induced transparency and electromagnetically induced absorption, and for different relative polarizations of the drive and probe fields. We show that these differences allow the contributions of different processes responsible for the enhanced Kerr nonlinearity of the media to be distinguished.